1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet feeding apparatus for feeding recording sheets of paper for use in a copying machine, printer and the like and for feeding originals for use in a copying machine, image reader, microphotographing apparatus and the like, and more particularly, to an improvement made in a sheet separating section for separating sheets of paper or originals to feed them one by one in a method of feeding stacked sheets or originals (hereinafter referred to as sheet) from a sheet stacked undermost.
2. Description of Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, for instance, when a sheet d stacked undermost of a document stack tray a is forwarded by a pick-up roller b arranged under the leading end portion of the stack tray a, it sometime happens to transport the whole sheets stacked thereon. For instance, even if a sheet stacked undermost is separated and transported through a separation section comprised of separation roller f and separation pad e pressed in contact with the roller f and the remaining sheets are arranged to be detained, the load is so great that it is liable to easily cause overlapping transport wherein sheets are transported in a state overlapping each other as illustrated in FIG. 2. When contact pressure is raised at the separation section in order to prevent the state of overlapping transport, there arise problems to damage sheets and easily wears the parts at the separation section. Heretofore, It has been proposed to provide a front separation plate g between the pick-up roller b and the separation section as illustrated in FIG. 1 to regulate the number of sheets being forwarded to the separation section. However, in a device which is provided with such a front separation plate g, a paper transport space h between the lower end of the front separation plate g and transport surface is set relatively large (for instance, about 3-5 mm), and therefore, considerable number of sheets are forwarded to the separation section to easily cause the overlapping transport of sheets. If, however, the space h is set smaller (for instance, below 1 mm), the whole sheets stacked are stopped at the portion of the front separation plate g and occurs erroneous sheet transportation.